FILM: Woyzeck

Woyzeck is the story of a soldier who provides for his lover, Marie, and illegitimate child by doing odd jobs around the town. He works as the doctor's experiment subject who puts him on strange diets. As a result, Franz slowly goes mad, while discovering Marie's affair with the local drum major, ending in violence. It is based off an unfinished play by Georg Büchner.


Here is Klaus Kinski in his element - playing a mad man. It is common knowledge that Kinski was considered by many to be mad himself, only a lot louder than the madness of his characters. He brilliantly plays this simple character and the development of his madness is interesting to watch.

The plot is quite simple for a Herzog film, as are the characters.
Kinski began filming this film only days after the filming of Nosferatu had finished, so reached the set in a state of exhaustion which definitely adds to the confused and mad look in the character's face.

Of the Herzog films I have seen so far, this is my least favourite, simply because it is rather simple - there's not much depth in the topics - and because I have already seen Kinski play a mad character in Aguirre, Wrath of God, which he did so magnificently. Having said that, Woyzeck is definitely worth a watch - it may be my least favourite Herzog film but it is, by all means, still a good film. What I mean to say is, Herzog may not out-do himself in this film, but it still is a Herzog film - and Herzog, it seems, cannot go wrong.

BOOK: Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

What a roller coaster of madness!

The story of the book is about a soldier in the second world war, Yossarian, who constantly strives to get himself out of the air force. He will do anything to stop being a pilot as he is terrified of flying missions - his role is to drop bombs from a plane (with a team) and try his hardest to get out of the artillery gun fire sent from below without dying, or having any of his men die. You can understand, then, why he wants out. We see many of the horrific situations he has been in during missions, and numerous characters die throughout.

But that makes the book sound simple! Oh no. 

There are about 50 different characters, all with their own eccentricities and bits of madness, all of which are complex, fascinating people, and all of which have aspects to commend and aspects to condemn. They are all normal people who have been put through, and exist in, very abnormal circumstances which slowly drive them insane. 

The plot doesn't follow a structure. After reading it, you could sit down and work out the exact order of events if you wanted, though that wouldn't add much to the book, if I'm honest. The unstructured, chaotic jumping from one memory to another adds to the madness of the whole thing. 

I found it difficult to read, at first, because the style of this book is like nothing you will ever have read before. You get to the middle of the book and it gets good. You get to the end, and it is BRILLIANT and you want to re-read the beginning because now you understand it.

It's confusing, it's intelligent, it's witty, it's horrific, it's nasty, it's sad, it's hilarious, it's mad - and it can do all these things in one paragraph.

Every sentence is there for a reason. 

---

If you're interested in the English Language and the way it works, read this book. If you want to look into the English Language and the way it works, read this book.

I don't recommend it to anyone who reads just for the sake of plot and action. This is a deeply intelligent, insightful book about madness and language and, I think, requires a philosophical frame of mind to understand it.

It is framed around the notion of 'catch 22': "a dilemma or difficult circumstance from which there is no escape because of mutually conflicting or dependent conditions."

Example:

Yossarian wishes to stop flying missions.

If you are crazy, you are allowed to stop flying missions.

Yossarian wishes to have it noted that he is crazy so that he can stop flying missions.

However, crazy people are crazy enough to want to fly missions.

If Yossarian is not crazy, he must continue flying missions. 

If Yossarian really is crazy, he would want to fly the missions.

Yossarian does not want to fly the missions, so he must not be crazy, and so, he must fly the missions.

Thus, either way, he must fly the missions.

Catch 22.

FILM: Everything is Illuminated

 Elijah Wood plays Jonathan, an odd American man who collects artefacts from his dead relatives. He wishes to look further into his Grandfather's past.
Eugene Hutz plays Alex, the son of a man who runs a service for people to discover histories of their ancestors in Ukraine - most of the people are, inevitably, Second World War Veterans.

Alex collects Jonathan from the station and brings him to a car driven by his mad Grandfather who has a mad Collie called Sammie Davis Jr. Jr.

A quiet and reserved Jew from modern America, a mad dog, a mad Grandfather, and a young Ukrainian man in one car, travelling around to try to find Jonathan's Ukrainian ancestry - it's hilarious.
It plays on the difference in cultures and the difficulties with language translation, while also bringing together a group of very clashing characters.

Here is a brilliant example of the typical kind of conversations they have throughout the film.

Despite its comical aspects, the film grows darker by the end as it delves into the dirty history of antisemitic Ukraine, and the somewhat ambiguous but dark history of Alex's Grandfather.

It's funny, it's beautiful, it's hard-hitting...it's a fascinating film.

(My partner discovered it because Eugene Hutz is in the brilliant Gypsy Punk band, Gogol Bordello - check them out!)

FILM: Fitzcarraldo

Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald is an Irishman, known in Peru as Fitzcarraldo. Fitz has a dream to open an opera house in his town in Peru and will stop at nothing to get it. In order to raise money, he buys a boat and sails it down the infamous Pachitea River to begin work in the rubber trade. The untouched rubber trees are just off the Ucayali River which is blocked from the Amazon River by dangerous rapids. It becomes Fitzcarraldo's mission to get his large boat from the Pachitea River, over a mountain, and into the Ucayali River on the other side.

I really enjoyed this film. Not only does it involve the mad notion of dragging a boat over a mountain for the far-off goal of opening an opera house, it also involves a very interesting look at the clashing of two cultures as Fitz and his crew become entangled in a very ambiguous deal with a tribe of natives.
The story ends very unexpectedly, in a heart-warming way, which is unusual for Werner Herzog. I loved the ending - what a great entrance! I don't want to spoil it for you.
I love the fact that Herzog's films involve no special effects - there were no special effects to use when these were being made. This means that Herzog and his crew actually pulled a massive boat over a mountain with a tribe of natives (as Herzog tells in his documentary My Best Fiend). Totally mad.

FILM: Cobra Verde

Cobra Verde - Green Snake - is an enterprising outlaw (he murdered his previous boss when he discovered he was being financially exploited). He is taken in by a baron who owns a sugar plantation run by slaves. After impregnating the Baron's three daughters, he is sent to West Africa where he is to restart the slave trade.
An African king wants him killed and captures him. The king's nephew rescues him from capture and he is given an army of female warriors by who he trains to fight in order to overtake a king.
Having won the fight, the King's nephew turns on Cobra Verde who tries and fails to escape into the ocean on a large canoe.

This is one film in which Klaus Kinski doesn't play a mad man!
Characteristically for Herzog, the film doesn't involve a lot of dialogue, more an in depth look into the internal struggles of one character.

Do we like Cobra Verde? He is a murderer and a slave trader, but he's not nasty to his slaves like the other traders - he seems a more moral man than many of the other characters - perhaps a misunderstood man? He does like to disobey orders and refuses to pander to those with a higher station to him - qualities I tend to like in a character.
The film leaves one with their own individual opinion of the man, Cobra Verde, since it doesn't give it's own moral stance of the situation - it just shows the happenings.
In this way, the film is brilliantly a-moral: it doesn't have an opinion; that is left for the viewer.

FILM: What About Bob

After all of the serious films I've been watching, this one was a bit of a relief.
What About Bob is about a man with almost every mental disability there is (he's scared of everything) who gets terribly attached to his new psychiatrist, Dr Leo Marvin.
Bob is a lovely man, though clearly mad. He follows Leo Marvin who is on a family holiday in Martha's Vineyard. Leo's family befriend Bob against Leo's wishes, and Bob ends up spending a lot more time with Leo's family than intended and hilarity ensues - right?

Well, some of it is funny. Bob does manage to create some bizarre moments because of his strange collection of mental ailments.
Leo gets more and more stressed and angry due to Bob who - it seems - it actually doing a lot of good for the rest of the family. Leo ends up being more mad than Bob.
Bill Murray's character is funny and lovable and, in that sense, it's a sweet film about a misunderstood man. However, Dr Leo Marvin is, at first, a realistic representation of a typical working father - he wants his kids to grow up his way, and wants to lead his life his way. He's very stuck in his ways and surprisingly unkind for a psychiatrist...his character nearing the end of the film got a bit tiring. He just gets more stressed and more angry.
So I suppose it's a film about the negative businessman reading a book by its cover. A good enough message, I suppose.
This message is definitely better than the comedy - I chuckled a bit.

FILM: The History Boys

With a star-studded cast, this film made Dominic Cooper and James Corden famous.
Written by Alan Bennett, starring Richard Griffiths and Frances de la Tour, this film was always going to be good.
It's about the struggle of a group of school boys doing their best to get into Oxbridge.
It tackles issues like homosexuality, paedophilia, education (how one should be educated), elitism in schools, and the life of a teenage schoolboy.
It tackles quite a lot in one go.
The lead roles are brilliantly acted, though the film doesn't have much depth to the characters - you could either say this makes the characters easier to act, or you could say the acting was brilliant because there wasn't much character for the actors to use.
The film seems to laugh its way through really troubling topics - like the relationships between the boys and their teachers.
The question is, were the decisions made the correct ones to make?
When the headmaster discovers the paedophilic actions of Richard Griffiths' character, he quietly fires him and does all he can not to make a scene for the sake of his school's reputation. Shouldn't he have got the police involved? Considering it is set in the 1980s, when this sort of thing happened frequently, should we just take it on the chin or should we condemn the headmaster along with the teacher nonetheless?